Freda and Daffy were not yet accustomed to Dreamikins' speeches. They stared at her in wonder. Then Daffy ventured to put her right.
"Do you think heaven is a little place? It stretches and stretches like elastic, and the more people go in the bigger it gets."
Dreamikins' blue eyes looked past Daffy as if she had not heard her.
"And of course if all the men did get killed, the women would go and finish the War, wouldn't they, Fibo? Mummy would—she wants to be there now, and I'd get a lovely gun and go with her."
"Oh, you modern child! Leave the War alone," said her uncle. "Let us talk of Whiskers, or Pixies, or anything but the Bad Bit of Life which is with us."
"Tell us one of your stories—not a arrygory, because I have to find the meaning, and it spoils it."
So the little girls settled down, and Fibo told them a wonderful, nonsensical story about a fat giant with a cough, who was afraid of his wife and tried to hide his wicked deeds from her, only his cough always betrayed him. And they listened breathlessly, and when he had finished, Freda gave a long sigh.
"You are a beautiful story-teller. I could listen all night."
"Yes," said Dreamikins proudly; "Fibo has got a big bump in his head, he says, which is bigger than other people's, and a little fairy lives inside it who whispers these stories to him. Sometimes she goes to sleep, and he can't wake her, and then he says he can't make up stories by himself, which is a pity."
"Dreamikins is exhausting in her demands," said Fibo. "The more she hears the more she wants to hear. My poor tongue aches with its constant wagging."